Gift Ideas ~ Make Gorgeous Mason Jar Vases

Is it gift season at your house? It is at mine. It is the time of year to think about and thank all the people who have given so much to me and my girls this school year. Gift ideas can be fun to come up!

As you may remember, we love Girl Scouts at our house. I think Girl Scout leaders are an often forgotten person who give a ton to my girls and many others. Being a leader myself, I know the time and energy that goes into planning and the time meetings take each week. I could easily spend that time other ways. I know the other leaders could as well. We have such an amazing troop and great leaders that I love giving back to them in a small way so they know that they are appreciated.

This year, I decided to make some Mason Jar vases for some of the leaders in our troop. I wish I had the budget to make them for all the leaders, but since we are in a large multi-level troop, it would get cost prohibitive to make them for everyone.

I made 5 vases, one for our main leader, two for the ladies who help me with the Daisy level, one for the leader of my other daughters level, and one for our cookie/nut mom. There are so many other great leaders that are in our troop as well, but that was what I could afford and what I had time to make. Making 5 vases takes a bit more time than just one!

Anyway, making a Mason Jar vase is pretty easy and it is such a pretty gift when you fill it with fresh flowers! Who doesn’t love to get flowers? You ready to make some vases? Let’s get to it.

Supplies:

Mason Jars

Acrylic paint (Affiliate link) I used 2 satin and one pearl for each vase.

Brush

Painter’s tape

Sandpaper

Baker’s twine

Thank you tag

If you plan to make your vases striped like mine, start by painting your base coat. This time I ended up painting three coats for my base coat. I think because of the white color, it didn’t seem to want to cover as well as when I made the Mason Jar pencil holders. Of course, those three layers of paint made it harder to get the distressed look when it came time to use the sandpaper.

After allowing your base color sufficient time to dry and set, tape off the area to paint the stripes.

Paint the stripe color and remove the tape. I went with the white and a pale green stripe as a nod to the Girl Scout colors.

I wanted my jars to have a pearlized look, so I added one more layer of paint. I added a layer of Martha Stewart Mother of Pearl (affiliate link). I love how this looked on the vases!

Lastly, you will want to distress your vases. Use sandpaper (I used 150 grit because that is all we had in the house…the living room project has eaten up all my sandpaper) to remove paint . It is easiest to distress the jars at the raised points. It makes those areas stand out and looks neat. I also like to distress around the rims and in one or two other places. I just like that look. Distress as much or as little as you think looks good.

Before you fill your vases with flowers, use some baker’s twine and add a thank you tag to your gift. You can download my tag if you are using yours for a Girl Scout leader or you can make your own.

Next up is to fill your jars with water and flowers. I almost never buy flowers (our cat eats them and knocks over any vase that is in the house), I had a little bit of sticker shock at what they charge for a few flowers….and yes I am admittedly cheap. Thank goodness for Trader Joe’s! They had great prices on flowers. I used Hydrangea, Gerber daisies, and some other filler flower that I don’t remember the name. Because the hydrangea is so big, I used only 5 stems of flowers in each vase.

Oh my goodness! Don’t they look adorbs?! We had a leader appreciation night a few weeks ago, so we gave these vases out at that Girl Scout meeting. My girls and I had fun giving them out and the leaders seemed to appreciate and enjoy receiving them. Perfect gift idea!

What kinds of gift ideas do you have? Share the wealth…I know we all need ideas. Leave a comment below so others can read your ideas as well. Thanks!

Hi! I’m visiting from One Project at a Time. These are super adorable! I love the colors. I should do this the next time I have to do a bunch of gift giving at the same time. They would be awesome in a gift basket. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks! Yes, if you want to use the same look I did, you will need 3 paint bottles. It is three different colors of paint. You won’t need 3 of each color. One of each color will be plenty. Hope that helps. Let me know if you have other questions.

These are very beautiful! I’ve never been able to get the acrylic to stay on the glass very well, maybe I’ll have to try the Martha Stewart acrylic. I’m glad I found your post on the Monday Funday link party.

Thank you! That is interesting that you haven’t been able to get it to stay on the glass. After the three layers of white that I did on these, I had a hard time getting it to sand off! Of course if you go for a look like I did here that is kind of shabby chic, if it chips off it doesn’t matter. It was meant to be. 😉

Your mason jar diy project post is being featured on #OMHGFF this week. And besides being Featured, it has been Pinned and Tweeted! 🙂 I hope you will stop by and share your blog again! 🙂 Have a great weekend! 🙂